LA_Drama Fan

Did that one at the beach count? He kissed her.... She didn't kiss him back. (plus, we know now that she had already planned this as their goodbye, but didn't have the decency to tell him).

tomorrow it ends....let's all be thankful for that. It's morning there now, so just relax and revel in the last day! Good nite!

My issue is more of how it changed. Pre Ep 33 it was in the low-mid 8s. But this YLAG wanna-be version is a 3 to me.

Based on my displeasure of both, I'd like their scores to be about the same

Although I wouldn't want him to make it to America, I wish they had taken that to a bit of a further end....
We see him from behind at the airport, and he is about to walk into the jetway from the waiting area, wearing the Baby Bjorn. As he heads to the door a hand plops down on his shoulder, and he stops. He turns and looks behind him with wide-eyes as he sees several policemen and behind them, in the background are CS/TK/CM/YD.

This could actually be a fun game!

I will go to my grave knowing they changed writers at Ep 30-33 ish. Too many fingerprints on the evidence, it has to be. Out of curiosity, I rewatched the first 2 episodes this week. The show is almost completely unrecognizable compared to this. It left me really sad to think of what became of this series.

This is one of those times that KBS owes its viewers an explanation of what the hell happened. I don't expect an apology, their ratings have been "good enough" in their eyes, but an explanation is due.

Of all the stupid things in this series, that decision bugs me the most. They went to all the trouble to set this up and just said, "nevermind". It could have gone many different ways, and they chose none of them. Hee's son should have been his. That would have solved part of the issue (your child will seek you).
Arrrgh. Sunday can't come soon enough.

I can't figure out how TRHC is holding at it's rating....it's as bad as this one, if not worse.

If you're looking for something more on the romance/comedy side, there are tons of recommendations here in this thread. For me, nothing even comes close to King The Land. It completely re-wrote the entire concept based on the leads. I use it to get the bad taste out of my mouth that this series has left. Plus only being 16 episodes, they didn't have time to screw up the series as KBS's 50 episode weekenders have done lately.

I'll offer a counterpoint to what's been posted. If you're interested in this series in any romantic way, FORGET IT, this is NOT the show you'd want.

For them to 'break up' they'd have to be 'together' in the first place, and I'll offer that never happened. Oh sure, they lived together in the same annex and pretended to be a couple, but none of that meant they were together. He did come to have feelings for her, and the car-camping scene was really sweet, but while she genuinely cared about him, she could never reciprocate his feelings for her and always kept a distance. Even when she did finally 'confess' her feelings for him, it was brief and her actions after that proved they weren't real. Their 'breakup' wasn't the typical "we need some time apart" type of thing we're used to being said over an awkward meeting of the couple. Rather, she coldly abandoned him without even a goodbye letter, despite having the time and chance to write one and further, didn't even bother to include him in the goodbye letter she left her family. She then ghosted him for about a year and went on to live her own life. They only reunited by accident. And the way she went about doing it really scarred both of them (especially him) and damaged their relationship. While technically, they were apart for about a year, covered in the timeskip episodes mentioned earlier, they weren't really a couple then.

And IMO, they still aren't, as his feelings still exceed hers and they lac k trust and communication with each other. Their physical contacts seem forced and unnatural and they only hug in response to stressful moments. That said, they are supportive of each other, but not what you'd expect from a loving couple that have known each other for about 18 months (they met in April 2023 and it's August/September of 2024 in the series).

If you were to scroll waaaaaay back in the messages to about the 2,000-3,000 range (back in the Spring) you'd see us chatting about how the inevitable breakup for a young couple in a romantic series would be handled. We had tons of theories about how they'd handle it. None of them came true as this did not become the family/romantic drama we'd thought we were in for based on the beginning of the series.

I get the distinct impression the writers are flailing about and the timejump is a handy life preserver being tossed to them. I don't know how else they are going to write themselves out of this?

I don't think there's been a single kiss on this show at all?

In thinking about it, I'm on board with rmtaylor's take that SJ will spill the beans on JD either inadvertently while threatening KS, or even deliberately to tell JD to break her from KS orbit.

They are painting her in a corner now, and her unstable and desperate behavior will trigger this as a last-ditch effort to shut KS out of JD's life to get the marrow. I don't think she cares about any effect this would have on JD, all she sees her firstborn as, is a cure for the child she cares for. Sort of a "Don't listen to him, he's not even your father!" moment.

Otherwise, at this point, who benefits from this spilling out? All the other secrets are exposed and we have < 2.5 hours of airtime left.

Well, I'm a native Los Angeleno, so I'm not sure I have a "cultural background", LOL. I am of what average American's would call "Middle-Eastern descent" and the cultural heritage of my ancestors that was drilled into me is not that different from our Far-Eastern cousins. And yes, I'm aware of the KAL cargo flight you cited where the young first officer didn't dare counter the very senior Captain. While KAL was forced to confront this and implement a change in their corporate culture, the same isn't easy for Korean society at large, given their embrace of Confucianism in the rise of the Joseon Dynasty to the current day.

I'm familiar with the concept of F. Piety, I've come to the Kdrama world from a more substantial background of historical dramas, of which I've been watching since 2000? Any rate, my issue with KS is that he's taking this to a level I've never seen anywhere. To me, he just doesn't act right. Sher has postulated that he's been on the receiving end of so much abuse thru his life that his automatic reaction now is to just bow and scrape and accept it. While tragic, if this is the case, what kind of ML is this?

To me, KS has issues. Marrying into MR's family will not solve them. He needs to fix himself first before bringing anyone else into his broken life. Well, at least, that's my 2 cents worth.

At this point, especially after this week, what I want to see is KS doing some self-reflection on what his life is, and how he handles stressful situations. What woman would want to be with a man so weak that she can't count on him to protect her from the bad people he allows in HIS life? I wish they would be realistic with MR and have her gently tell him, that he is not able to give her the things she wants in a relationship and for him to figure out things for himself.

KS really needs to get his life together and determine what he wants to be and make some intelligent choices for once. The inevitable Happy Ending is going to seem so ridiculous. KS has been in a boatload of bad things in his life, he really needs a counselor to talk to, so he can approach life differently. Maybe instead of the final scene I proposed last week ( a married MR sees him handing out fliers for SJ years later) the series should end with MR breaking up with him and telling him these things, and we cut to a scene of him walking into a psychiatrist's office and the door closing. That would be a lot more fitting to me and I could forgive a lot of the writer's sins if they were that honest with us.

(just rewatched that last scene). He DOES go in to separate SJ from the family (correctly), but then he did the usual KS brain-freeze and instead of dragging her out of the house, he stands there silently, like his CPU is busy running background applications. I truly wonder at times if KS is really all-there, mentally speaking.

I especially agree with your first point. When they walked in together, my jaw dropped and I thought WHAT IS THIS??
2nd point - when she said the word 'remarried' I kept waiting for SOMETHING.

It gets there, don't worry. They will have a lot of issues to work out and that's one of the reasons the back half of this series is so good. Plus, the leads had really good chemistry too....She is a strong, moral woman and he REALLY loves her. I'd love to see them paired again.

The episodes are not bad, it's just the helter-skelter nature of the storyline now that is off-putting. Again, the pacing is break-neck speed compared to what we complained of for 50+ episodes.

In this one, every time I see SJ putting food in front of JD, I keep thinking "she's fattening her up for the kill", ala the Twilight Series Episode "To Serve Man". And now that everyone knows everything (except JD secret) next week will go by even quicker, thankfully. Maybe JD secret is just going to be left unsaid, if there is no place for it. We all know (suspect) that SJ will head back to USA once this matter is settled, whether to not she takes Jenny is up in the air, for me.

As Sher notes below, KS continues as the most unimpressive ML in Kdrama-land. Enough said. If "The Meek shall inherit the Earth", he's got it made with MR by Ep 121. Which, IMO would ruin the whole series. But anyways.....

The bit where SJ just barges into the Hwang home really points to everything wrong now: In other series, we'd at least see a frantic housekeeper trailing her screeching that this lady just barged past her. Here, they don't even bother with that detail, making the scene so unbelievable. This missed details keep adding up and make the plot a joke.

I know I'm in the vast minority about Aunty Ding. I really do enjoy their story-line, but at this point it's so out of place, it's too jarring. The should have done the whole SJ returns story arc 40 episodes ago, and gotten that out of the way for Dingy/DH and KS/MR. But that's not what we got.

Kudos again to the young actress playing JD. I detest the character, but she is doing a fantastic job with her.

"Of course, one can say "Why are you getting worked up so much ? It is just fiction." And because it is fiction, we expect better work from those who make these imaginary worlds."

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